• In late 2018, France's "Yellow Vest" protesters torched cars, fought police, and defaced monuments in a fury at the government, led by President Emmanuel Macron.
• Business Insider spoke with members, almost all of whom said that, despite anger toward Macron, ousting him would not help.
• The most likely successor to Macron would be Marine Le Pen, a far-right figure whom he beat in an election in 2017.
• The protesters say they want to be heard by elites, and are calling for a system of direct democracy.
• The group claimed victory on December 10 by forcing Macron to scrap an incoming tax on diesel, and getting a 6% hike in the minimum wage.
• The group is in a position of power, but unsure how to use it. Here is what some have to say about the movement's future.

In November and December French protest group the Yellow Vests ("Les Gilets Jaunes" in French) held Paris to ransom by burning cars, defacing monuments, and blocking roads across France.

Their complaint: that President Emmanuel Macron and his government had abandoned the people, and needed to change course, and fast.

They were quickly victorious, forcing Macron to abandon part of his policy platform and wage raises in a panicked attempt to quieten the sudden anger against him.

Macron has undoubtedly been diminished by the revolt. But, according to Business Insider's conversations with figures inside the movement, his position at the top of French society is more secure than it might seem.

After more than a month of protest, Business Insider spoke with 12 Yellow Vests figures across France, including prominent activists online, where the group conducts almost all its activity.

What is clear is that they feel France no longer looks after the lower class, and needs a system of direct democracy put in place so they can start influencing laws in the country directly, via referendum.

But, failing that, they told Business Insider that having Macron for a president is preferable to the other most obvious candidate: the far-right Marine Le Pen.

What has happened so far?

The Yellow Vests held France to ransom with protests on November 17 and 24, and December 1 and 8.

President Macron conceded on December 10 he had done wrong, and said he would change course to heed their anger.

As a direct result of the protests nine people were killed, over 100 cars torched, the symbolic Arc de Triomphe was defaced, and hundreds of rioters were arrested in clashes with police.

Macron said their anger was "deep, and in many ways legitimate."

His concessions, estimated to cost between eight and 10 billion euros, included scrapping a planned diesel fuel tax, raising the minimum wage by 6% (around €100 per month,) incentivising employers to give their staff tax-free bonuses, and cancelling a tax increase for low-income pensioners.

Despite this, they protested in numbers again on December 15. 

Didier Plagne, a rank-and-file protester in Normandy, and soon-to-be pensioner, told Business Insider the concessions are "dressing on a wooden leg."

Macron's wide-ranging concessions show the group has moved on from single-issue protest to a much broader range of perceived injustices.

The initial complaint that diesel was being taxed too highly — punishing rural workers dependent on cars — was soon joined by complaints about rising costs of living, tax breaks for the richest in society, the French constitution, and the narrowness of France's political class.  

What will happen in 2019?

Business Insider spoke with 12 figures in the Yellow Vests, who gave an insight into what they want and what would convince them to stop their protests.

Christophe Bregaint is a single 48-year-old father of two and accountant who has protested every week in the Paris region.

"When we started on November 17, everyone thought it would last a week, no one imagined then that a month after it would continue," he said, "today, the people are ready to pass Christmas on the roundabouts, to continue the movement."

The Yellow Vests are a disparate, ad-hoc group who have not articulated a coherent set of priorities.

But everyone Business Insider spoke to seems convinced that Macron's concessions on December 10 are little more than a start.

After Macron spoke on live TV to outline the promises, protesters took to social media to denounce the concessions. Bregaint was among them.

He told Business Insider he lives on €1,850 per month (around $2,100 per month, or $25,200 per year) and that Macron's promise of €100 more per month will not be enough to change his situation. 

Bregaint said he wants the group to go further than winning concessions from Macron. Essentially, a revolution to topple the whole system of government (one which has been in use since 1958.)

He wants France to enter into a "Sixth Republic," he told Business Insider (the current system is known as the Fifth Republic). He wants the members of the National Assembly to better represent everyday real French people.

He says there are very few Deputies and Senators from working class backgrounds.

Bregaint wants Les Gilets Jaunes to be the ones to change France, and is not the only one in favour of overthrowing the government.

Teddy Lemaire, who has protested in both Paris and Orléans, told Business Insider some members are convinced that the Yellow Vests are the movement to bring down the government.

But Lemaire was softer than some, and said he wants to give Macron a chance to react to the mood in France. If he misses it, he says, France's patience will snap. 

"I think that the ultimate goal of this movement is to make the government listen to reason," he said, "and if the government does not want to react then it will have to leave, because the French will not endure this situation for a long time."

Thomas Miraflors, a prominent protester in Perpignan, near France's southern border and a frequent poster on the "Gilets Jaunes Leadership" Facebook group, said the movement "holds the key to the solution to enforce democracy."

He believes referendums are the solution, effectively giving middle and lower class people the power to circumvent the political class.

Direct democracy

He and other Yellow Vests are coalescing around a proposed system known as Référendum d'initiative citoyenne (RIC), which is "citizens' initiative referendum" in English.

Under their system, petitions (presumably, but not explicitly, online petitions) would help steer the government's agenda.

It specifies that if a petition reaches 700,000 signatures then there would be a compulsory national referendum on the proposed change.

France does have referendums, but there have only been five since 1990. Four have been on the mechanics of local government, and one was on European integration. The new system would dramatically expand this.

In the French media, on Yellow Vest forums and social media, and among the members we spoke to, the RIC plan is by far the most salient single issue which they agree on.

Macron, with a difference

Many Yellow Vests are also clear that they want the RIC plan to be implemented by Macron, rather than kicking him out.

The most obvious alternative, a government led by Marine Le Pen, the anti-immigrant leader of the National Rally party (formerly the populist Front National,) would be far worse, they said. 

Le Pen came close to winning the 2017 elections. In the first round Len Pen won 21% of the vote to Macron's 24%. This prompted a second round where the two went head-to-head, which Macron won with 66% of the vote.

But 18 months after the election, Le Pen remains strong in French polls, and extremely close to Macron.

21.5% of French people would vote for Macron and En Marche!, closely followed by 21% for Le Pen and National Rally, according to a nationwide poll in September 2018 from Odoxa-Dentsu Consulting.

The Institut Français D'opinion Publique has Le Pen ahead, on 27% to Macron's 25%.

Their nearest current challenger, Laurent Wauquiez, and his party Lés Republicains, currently have around 14% of the vote, according to the same Odoxa-Dentsu Consulting poll. 

Didier Plagne, the Normandy protester nearing retirement, said: "The movement of the Yellow Vests will last until Macron really understands it. i.e. a long time."

Plagne said the main reason for giving Macon a chance to act is because the other option is worse.

"Marine Le Pen, who is the only alternative, would be a mistake," he said.

Protester Guillaume Lacordais shares this sentiment. "The French did not want Le Pen in 2017," he said, "what they want is to regain control."

Paris protester Teddy Lemaire said: "I do not wish to see the government of Mrs Le Pen because what we need is a real renewal in the political class."

"I would like to see Macron and his government resign because he is the direct representative of a system that the French no longer want."

"The real problem is the current elected officials who prefer to flirt with money more than with the people. Today we need a true leader, close to the people."

Like Lemaire, Benjamin Chapeaux-Rond, a Yellow Vest from Nantes, near France's west coast, said he is against Macron.

But he told Business Insider: "I am also against Marine Le Pen, who is an incompetent who has just the talents of speaking."

Another protester, Luca Freeman, said: "Not Marine Le Pen. I would like the French people to be listened to by their elites and not repressed by violence, as is the case now."

When asked by Business Insider whether he would like to see the change, Rudolphe Boullay, an organizer of the 40,000-strong Nous Gilets Jaunes Facebook page simply said: "Uh... Le Pen would be worse than Macron."

Le Pen's policies include calling a referendum to revise the French Constitution, and sweeping electoral reform which she says will give real French people more representation. 

Didier Hernandis, a protester from Fontcouverte, in the Alps, told us: "Macron can stay, as long as we manage to impose the Citizen Initiative Referendums in any matter!"

Bregaint and Lemaire were the only Yellow Vests we spoke with who want to see the end of the Macron government outright. Neither said Le Pen was a viable option, only a total overthrow of the system.

This dynamic leaves Macron a lifeline: even though he is despised by many of the protesters, and weakened politically, he is bolstered by the fact that there's nothing else.

How he responds to the protest group could well determine the shape of French politics in 2019 — and for years to come.

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NOW WATCH: Anthony Scaramucci claims Trump isn't a nationalist: 'He likes saying that because it irks these intellectual elitists'

• Theresa May has just over three months to save her Brexit project.
• With little support for her deal in the UK Parliament, the prime minister needs to think again.
• Despite the huge difficulties she faces, some options still remain.
• Here's how the prime minister could still find a route out of her Brexit nightmare.

Theresa May heads into the New Year after the most difficult month of her premiership thanks to the continuing turmoil and uncertainty over Brexit.

With the Brexit deal May secured with the EU gathering little support in Parliament, May has been forced to fight off multiple attempts to oust her from both inside and outside her party.

In recent weeks the UK prime minister was forced to postpone her planned Brexit deal vote in parliament, fought a brutal one-day leadership challenge launched by her own MPs, and suffered public humiliation at the hands of EU leaders in Brussels.

With the possibility of a further vote of no confidence in May's government in the UK parliament, it has become increasingly difficult to see how she can find a way out of her current predicament.

So is May's Brexit project now doomed to failure, or is there still a route out for the British prime minister?

Here are five ways Brexit could now pan out.

Pass a tweaked deal

More than 100 Conservative MPs have pledged to vote against May's Brexit deal, with the Democratic Unionist Party, which props up her minority government, also committed to vote it down. With Labour and other opposition parties also opposed to May's deal, many assume it is impossible for her to win a majority in parliament for this, or any deal.

But is it really as impossible as it looks?

While Labour are opposed to the deal as it stands, there is a chance that they could change their mind if May manages to tweak her deal. If May were to drop her red lines and seek a renegotiated deal in which the UK would stay in a Customs Union with the EU then it is not impossible to imagine Labour either backing the deal explicitly, or abstaining.

As one senior adviser to Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn told Business Insider this month: "I could see a scenario where May comes back with a slightly softer deal and we say 'well that is the best we can do. That nearly meets our objectives' and then we will try to renegotiate in office." 

Pivot to a softer Brexit

At the start of the Brexit process, May was persuaded by her then adviser Nick Timothy to rule out staying in the Single Market and Customs Union after Brexit. 

However, by committing to cutting all customs and trade ties with the EU, May made it all but inevitable that there would need to be a hard border with Northern Ireland and the Republic. By risking that, it also became inevitable that she would lose the support of the DUP.

However, with May's red lines running up against the unbreakable walls of EU policy and UK parliamentary arithmetic, she may ultimately decide that she has little choice but to drop them. As I have argued before, the only sort  of Brexit that has a hope of passing through parliament is a soft Brexit.

Faced with the grim reality of risking the economic and political pain of a no-deal Brexit, or abandoning Brexit altogether, May could ultimately decide that a soft Brexit is better than a bad Brexit or no Brexit at all.

Delay Brexit

There are little more than three months to go until March 29 when Britain will automatically leave the EU under the terms of the Article 50 withdrawal process. In that time May must win a vote in parliament for her deal, then go through the painstaking process of passing the necessary legislation to implement it. She must do all of this without a majority in parliament and with more than a third of her own MPs publicly calling on her to stand down. This is not so much a mountain to climb as it is a deep-sea trench to swim. The prime minister has far too much to do, and far too little time and political capital to do it with.

Given this is the case, May could ultimately have little choice but to seek an extension to the Article 50 process. The Irish Taoiseach has already offered to assist with such an extension and it is not impossible to imagine other EU leaders falling into line. 

Doing so is not without its problems. Any extension would likely mean Britain would have to take part in this May's European Parliament elections and it would also be treated as a betrayal both by large numbers of her own MPs as well as many Brexit voters. The EU would also be reluctant to agree an extension unless there were an explicit purpose and end point for that extension. Simply kicking the problem six or 12 months down the road, without any method to solve it over that period, is unlikely to be warmly received by the EU.

Call a second referendum

The prime minister has repeatedly insisted that there will not be a second Brexit referendum. However, she was similarly insistent that there would not be a snap election in 2017 and that she would not pull her Brexit vote this week. 

What recent events have proven is that what May does or doesn't want out of this process is no longer the main issue. All that matters is what is possible to get through Parliament.  

Right now the prospects of passing an EU referendum through parliament, without the explicit support of the government, looks incredibly difficult. Even if the Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn were to back one, and as BI has reported his team is very reluctant to do so, there would likely be significant numbers of backbench Labour MPs who would vote against it. And while the number of Conservative MPs who would agree to a referendum is increasing, the numbers still don't look good enough for one to pass.

And even if the principle of holding another vote was to pass, it would take the best part of six months to agree on what that vote should look like and pass the act of parliament needed to trigger one.

However, that doesn't mean it is impossible. If May is unable to pass a deal then she may be persuaded that a referendum is a better option than either a general election or a no-deal Brexit. And while the process would take time, the EU would probably agree some form of extension to the process if it allowed the possibility of Britain remaining in the bloc.

Cancel Brexit

If all of the above fails then there is one last option open to the prime minister — cancel Brexit. 

The ECJ ruled this month that Britain has the right to unilaterally withdraw the Article 50 process if it chooses to. Obviously doing so would be a politically explosive and arguably undemocratic. But faced with the possibility of doing so or allowing Britain to fall out of all existing trade, customs, security and aviation rules with nothing to replace them, then calling the whole thing off could be the least worst option. In any case it need not be a complete cancellation. The prime minister could choose to withdraw Article 50 under the condition of calling a second referendum that would effectively be a simple re-run of the vote in 2016. This would allow Brexit voters another chance to get what they want while avoiding the utter chaos of leaving without a deal. 

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NOW WATCH: Anthony Scaramucci claims Trump isn't a nationalist: 'He likes saying that because it irks these intellectual elitists'

• Former Watergate prosecutor said President Donald Trump's tweet about being "all alone" in the White House reminded him of Richard Nixon's last days before his resignation.
• Nick Akerman said Nixon "really kept to himself" in the last days of his presidency.
• He was referring to Trump's tweet on Christmas Eve that he was by himself waiting for Democrats to meet his demands on border security.
• Akerman suggested that Trump was having trouble with Special Counsel Robert Mueller's progress in the Russia investigation.

A former Watergate prosecutor said President Donald Trump's tweet that he was "all alone" in the White House on Christmas Eve reminded him of Richard Nixon's final days as president before his resignation.

Trump tweeted on Monday morning: "I am all alone (poor me) in the White House waiting for the Democrats to come back and make a deal on desperately needed Border Security."

"At some point the Democrats not wanting to make a deal will cost our Country more money than the Border Wall we are all talking about," he continued. "Crazy!"

Trump had been criticizing Democrats for not giving into his demands to fund a giant wall along the US-Mexico border. The gridlock led to a partial shutdown of the federal government.

Akerman, who was an assistant special prosecutor in the Watergate scandal, said Trump's tweet reminded him of Nixon's last days at the White House and suggested that Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation was "falling in on" Trump.

Nixon resigned from office in 1973 days after admitting that he misled the country about the White House's involvement in the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington, DC, during his reelection.

Akerman told MSNBC's Chris Wallace on Wednesday: "[It's] very much the same. Nixon really kept to himself. He wound up sitting in front of the fire, and just kind of ruminating — to the point where his Secretary of Defense was so concerned, there was an alert to go out to not take any of Nixon's orders if he were to ask them to basically release any ICBMs, or missiles, against Russia."

Akerman suggested that Trump's worries could be related to Mueller's investigation into the Trump presidential campaign's ties to Russia.

Referring to Trump, Akerman said: "He has got the entire wall falling in on him at this point. He's got three cooperating witnesses, three people who are very close to him: Michael Flynn, his former security adviser; [Rick] Gates who was the deputy to [Paul] Manafort and was running the campaign after Manafort left; and then you've also got Michael Cohen, his personal lawyer."

Read more:The 20 biggest Trump-Russia bombshells of 2018

In 2018, Gates pleaded guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI, Manafort was convicted of several counts of fraud and failure to report foreign bank accounts, and Cohen pleaded guilty in two federal criminal probes. All are cooperating in the Mueller investigation.

Akerman added: "I don't think we ever had any witnesses in the White House that were that close to Nixon. John Dean — who was the lawyer in the White House — didn't really have the closeness to Nixon that any of these three people have."

The Watergate prosecutor also said that the amount of indictments and guilty pleas Mueller had obtained so far were "remarkable," adding: "None of this is good news for the White House."

Watch the full interview here:

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NOW WATCH: Anthony Scaramucci claims Trump isn't a nationalist: 'He likes saying that because it irks these intellectual elitists'

• The UK's Defence Secretary said he has 'deep concerns' about using equipment from Chinese firm Huawei in the UK's upcoming 5G networks.
• Gavin Williamson is the first UK government figure to issue such a warning, after similar alarm over Huawei in the US.
• Huawei is banned from Australia's 5G networks, and is effectively banned in the US over fears it enables spying by the Chinese government.
• Huawei has always denied building backdoors into its own kit.

The UK's Defence Secretary, Gavin Williamson, said he has 'grave, very deep concerns' about using equipment from Chinese firm Huawei in Britain's 5G infrastructure.

According to The Times, Williamson said the UK would need to examine the possible security threats as it upgrades its mobile networks over the next two years.

"I have grave, very deep concerns about Huawei providing the 5G network in Britain. It’s something we’d have to look at very closely," he said. "We’ve got to look at what partners such as Australia and the US are doing in order to ensure that they have the maximum security of that 5G network and we’ve got to recognise the fact, as has been recently exposed, that the Chinese state does sometimes act in a malign way."

Huawei is one of the most popular consumer smartphone brands in the world and sells more phones than Apple globally. But Western governments are sounding the alarm over Huawei's core telecommunications business, due to concerns its equipment contains flaws that enable spying by the Chinese government.

The company has always denied that its equipment contains "backdoors" in this way. In a statement to The Times, Huawei said it had "never been asked by any government to build any backdoors or interrupt any networks, and we would never tolerate such behaviour by any of our staff."

The UK is due to shift over to superfast 5G networks from 2019, with telcos such as BT and O2 beginning to run small-scale trials. There are also broader concerns about having a Chinese company dominate so much of the UK's critical infrastructure.

Alex Younger, the head of M16, warned earlier in December that the UK needed to examine its relationships with Chinese tech companies closely.

He said at the time: "We need to decide the extent to which we are going to be comfortable with Chinese ownership of these technologies and these platforms in an environment where some of our allies have taken a very definite position."

Read more: An arrest, a debutante ball, and 3 marriages: Inside the lives of the super rich Huawei dynasty

The US has taken a much stronger stance against Huawei, reportedly pressuring local telcos like AT&T not to sell the firm's smartphones. And in August 2018, president Donald Trump signed a bill banning Huawei and another Chinese firm, ZTE, from use by the government and contractors. According to the Wall Street Journal, the US has asked its allies to follow suit. Both Huawei and ZTE are banned in Australia from having any part in its 5G networks.

The UK's biggest telecoms firm, BT, has already said it will remove Huawei's equipment from its existing EE mobile networks, and won't use its kit in its 5G network. The company said the decision was made to bring EE's networks in line with its existing legacy infrastructure.

Huawei is still permitted to sell phones in the UK and, given its difficulties in the US, Europe remains one of its biggest consumer markets. The Chinese firm also has a facility in Banbury, Oxford, which runs security tests on its own equipment. That facility is regularly scrutinised by British intelligence agency GCHQ.

SEE ALSO: Britain's spy chief joined the US in sounding the alarm on the Chinese company that sells more phones than Apple

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NOW WATCH: China made an artificial star that's 6 times as hot as the sun, and it could be the future of energy

• US stocks are set to open lower — a sign the biggest one-day market rally since 2009 will be short-lived.
• S&P 500, Dow and Nasdaq futures are all pointing to a drop of at least 1.5%. Asian and European stock benchmarks also fell. 
• Both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 were recently flirting with bear territory.

US stocks are set to open lower — a sign the biggest one-day market rally since 2009 will be short-lived. 

It's been a brutal month for markets, capped by a whirlwind holiday week as stocks swung from the worst Christmas Eve on record to the best day in a decade.

Futures of both the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500, which were recently flirting with bear territory, plunged at least 1.4% in early morning New York trading on Thursday. The major averages posted huge recoveries Wednesday, after being closed for the holiday Tuesday and posting steep declines on Christmas Eve.

On Wednesday, Wall Street attempted to shake off four sessions of sharp declines as the Dow surged 5%, or more than 1,000 points, and recorded the largest daily point gain in its history. Meanwhile, the S&P 500 climbed 4.9%.

"It’s still too early to conclude whether the market correction is over or more downside is yet to come," said Hussein Sayed, Chief Market Strategist at FXTM. "Such rallies are not uncommon in troubled times, and we have experienced many of them in past bear markets. To call for a bottom, we need at least a couple of days of strength, not just in price, but also in trading volume, breadth of the market, and fundamentally supported environment. So far, we don’t see a shift in fundamentals."

Read more: 'Something is wrong': 2 major US markets are out of whack

Political turmoil this week has added to concerns about a cocktail of factors — including slowing growth, trade tensions, and more expensive refinancing after years of stimulus — that have weighed on global markets in recent months.

Here's the scorecard of how markets are faring about an hour into London trading: 

• In the US, S&P 500, Dow and Nasdaq futures are all pointing to a drop of more than 1.5%. 
• In Asia, the Shanghai Composite Index and the Hang Seng index each lost at least 0.6%
• In Europe, the benchmark Euro Stoxx 50 lost 1.1%.
• Oil plunged. Brent crude dropped 2.1% to $54.11 per barrel. WTI fell 1.9%.
• The VIX, the volatility index otherwise known as the "fear gauge," shot up 2.2%.

SEE ALSO: 'Something is wrong': 2 major US markets are out of whack

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NOW WATCH: Bernie Madoff was arrested 10 years ago today — here's what his life is like in prison

Drones — also commonly referred to as unmanned aircraft — are no longer a cool, new novelty that companies in only a handful of industries are testing.

Businesses across various industries and levels of government in the US are utilizing at least a handful of drones. But more importantly, drone users are now realizing a deep return on their investments from the aircraft's ability to help save hours of time and labor.

However, to successfully get a drone program up and running, businesses need to have an idea of what they want the aircraft to do, and the value they hope to create. To that end, companies need to know what their competitors are doing with the aircraft so they can plan their own projects accordingly.

In this report, Business Insider Intelligence details how unmanned aircraft are disrupting a slew of different industries, including agriculture, construction and mining, insurance, media and telecommunications, and the public sector. We also size the market for global enterprise drone shipments, and pinpoint the features that make drones useful tools within different industries. Lastly, we make predictions for how drone use in these industries will evolve over the next five to 10 years and to what extent their impact will be magnified over this period.

Here are some of the key takeaways:

• Since the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) implemented its Part 107 regulations for unmanned aircraft in August 2016, the commercial drone industry in the US has taken off. 
• Companies across the US have rushed to deploy drones to cut costs, boost operational efficiency, and open up new streams of revenue. Meanwhile, firms elsewhere in the world have taken notice and ramped up their own drone projects.
• Unmanned aircraft have the potential to create the greatest business value in the construction, mining, and agriculture industries. The agriculture industry was a relatively early adopter of drones, and today one-third of farmers in the US plan to use at least one drone this year. Meanwhile, drones will have a less significant, yet noticeable, impact on media, telecommunications, and insurance businesses.
• Drones will lead these industries to become highly data-driven in the coming years, making the aircraft a must-have for companies to keep pace with their competitors. They will allow businesses to synthesize and analyze trends in their workflows to bolster their operational efficiency and predict problems before they happen.

In full, the report:

• Analyzes the development of drone use across five different industries.
• Offers a look at how drone use in these industries will evolve over the coming years.
• Sizes the market for enterprise drone shipments over a seven-year period, both in the US and abroad.

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• President Donald Trump's medical exemption from the Vietnam War draft is in question after The New York Times reported that a podiatrist might have diagnosed him with bone spurs as a favor to his father Fred Trump.
• Donald Trump biographer Michael D'Antonio corroborated the Times report, saying that Trump took off his shoes and tried to show him his bone spurs when they met years ago.
• But D'Antonio said he didn't see anything on Trump's feet.
• He added that Trump might have genuinely believed that he had bone spurs.

A biographer of President Donald Trump said the president once took off his shoes to show him the alleged bone spurs that got him out of the draft for the Vietnam War, but he "didn't see" any evidence of them.

Michael D'Antonio discussed the incident on CNN on Wednesday after The New York Times reported that a foot doctor might have falsely diagnosed Trump with bone spurs to help him avoid the Vietnam War as a favor to Trump's father and the doctor's landlord, Fred Trump.

Read more:Trump visited a war zone for the first time, as new questions emerge about the bone-spur diagnosis that helped him avoid Vietnam

D'Antonio, who saw the president's feet while interviewing him for his 2015 book "Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success," said Trump might not even have known that the bone-spur diagnosis was questionable because he genuinely appeared to believe he had the podiatric problem.

He told CNN's Don Lemon on Wednesday: "I'm not even sure actually that the president knows the truth about this. This is the odd thing: He may have been examined. He took off his shoes and tried to show me these bone spurs. I didn't see anything."

Bone spurs form in joints, often in places where two bones meet, as a result of joint damage.

Daughters of Dr. Larry Braunstein, the New York podiatrist, suggested to The Times that their father diagnosed Donald Trump with bone spurs so that Fred Trump would take care of his building.

Elysa Braunstein said: "If there was anything wrong in the building, my dad would call and Trump would take care of it immediately. That was the small favor that he got."

Trump received four Vietnam War draft deferments for education while in college, then received a medical deferment for bone spurs that ultimately kept him from being eligible for the draft.

D'Antonio said on Wednesday: "So many of his biographical details are hazy. In this case, I believe these women, I don't think there ever was a medical issue."

Then-presidential candidate Trump told ABC News in 2015: "I had a minor medical deferment for feet, for a bone spur of the foot, which was minor ... I was fortunate, in a sense, because I was not a believer in the Vietnam War."

D'Antonio had discussed the bone spur diagnosis with Trump while interviewing him for his 2015 book, "Never Enough: Donald Trump and the Pursuit of Success," D'Antonio wrote on CNN last year.

D'Antonio said: "The irony here is that Fred Trump was trying to do something for his son. Donald was not a conscientious objector but he really did not want to serve, and he was like millions of other young men during the Vietnam War who tried whatever they could do to get out of their service."

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NOW WATCH: Anthony Scaramucci claims Trump isn't a nationalist: 'He likes saying that because it irks these intellectual elitists'

• 1MDB is one of the biggest financial scandals of all-time. 
• A financial fraud involving the Malaysian state-owned investment fund, it involved missing billions, Hollywood celebrities and the downfall of the Malaysian prime minister.
• We broke down all the major events for you that stretched all the way back to 2009.

It's one of the greatest scandals in financial history. "1MDB" started out as a government plan to fund infrastructure projects in Malaysia but turned into an alleged swindle to tune of more than $3 billion. It brought down Malaysia's prime minister, the prime suspect is still on the run, and Goldman Sachs might be on the hook for crushing fines. 

US and Malaysian authorities, as well as those in the UK, Australia and Singapore, among others, are continuing to figure out just what happened, and who is responsible. Malaysia this week filed the first criminal charges for Goldman Sachs and a few ex-bank and fund employees, while lawsuits are still being filed over billions in missing cash. Goldman Sachs says it is cooperating with authorities and will contest the charges.

Somehow actor Leonardo DiCaprio, model Miranda Kerr, and the estate of Jean-Michel Basquiat got dragged into the mess, too.

This is the history of 1MDB and the characters that made it.

SEE ALSO: A Middle Eastern investment giant is suing Goldman Sachs over the 'massive international conspiracy' of the 1MDB scandal

1Malaysia Development Berhad, or 1MDB, was founded in 2009 just four months after Najib Razak became Prime Minister of Malaysia. Ensnared in the scandal, he later lost reelection and was charged with abuse of power and criminal breach of trust in relation to SRC International, a former 1MDB unit. Najib pleaded not guilty charges and has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to 1MDB.

The fund was originally set up to finance infrastructure and other economy-linked deals in Malaysia. But the fund veered into lavish spending, producing films such as “The Wolf of Wall Street” and buying casinos, champagne and “Dustheads,” a painting by US artist Jean-Michel Basquiat.

Source: Reuters

An estimated $4.5 billion was misappropriated from 1MDB by high-level officials and their associates between 2009 and 2014, the US Department of Justice has alleged. Razak has consistently denied wrongdoing. The scandal spreads across a number of companies and financial institutions with eye-watering sums involved.

Source: DOJ

• Prince Harry reportedly attended the annual Boxing Day shoot as normal on Tuesday, despite rumours that Meghan Markle had asked him to skip it because of objection to blood sports.
• A royal insider told the Daily Mail that the Duchess of Sussex attended a "cold cuts feast" at a cottage on the family's Sandringham Estate after the hunt had taken place.
• Meghan refuses to wear fur and is anti-blood sports, according to numerous reports.
• However, a source told the Mail that claims that Meghan was stopping Harry from attending the shoot were untrue.

The royal family put on a united front on Tuesday when they arrived at Sandringham for the Christmas church service.

Prince William, Kate Middleton, Meghan Markle, and Prince Harry were all in attendance despite growing numbers of reports that a bitter rift has opened up between the two couples.

Read more:A bitter rift is opening in the royal family with Harry and Meghan on one side and Kate and William on the other, according to more and more reports

The show of solidarity carried into the next day when Harry reportedly attended the annual Boxing Day shoot, despite previous reports that Meghan had asked him to skip it because of her hatred for bloodsports.

Furthermore, the Duchess of Sussex attended a "cold cuts feast" at Wood Farm, a cottage on the family's Sandringham Estate where Prince Philip spends much of his retirement, following the morning's sport, according to the Daily Mail.

"The men went out as usual for the shoot after a hearty breakfast," a Sandringham insider told the Mail.

"A buffet is laid out of kedgeree, bacon and eggs, cereals and toast to set them up for the day.

"It's cold trudging across the muddy fields so you need plenty of sustenance."

The Sandringham insider also told the Mail that any tension between the duchesses has subsided:

"The whole thing is incredibly relaxed and everyone is normally in a great mood. Although he can't shoot anymore Prince Philip loves being there and so does the Queen.

"She will be delighted that Kate and Meghan have sorted out their problems and that the year has ended on a high with the whole family in harmony."

Meghan refuses to wear fur and is anti-blood sports, according to numerous reports. She has also advocated ethically-sourced clothing in the past and shown a penchant for vegan leather.

However, a source told the Mail that claims that Meghan was stopping Harry from attending the shoot were untrue.

"It is completely untrue to say she has banned him from anything, particularly this. Harry couldn't attend last year's shoot as he had to drive to London for work."

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 7 things you shouldn't buy on Black Friday

• Chris Smith, who oversees more than $500 million as the founding portfolio manager of the Artisan Thematic Fund, shares his top investing recommendation for 2019.
• Smith's fund returned 20.59% for the 12 months that ended in November, putting it in the 99th percentile relative to competitors.

Any prudent investor recognizes the importance of maintaining a diversified portfolio. How one can best achieve that proper mix of holdings, however, is open to wide interpretation.

Some investors like to simply own a large number of stocks. Others will try to balance broader sectors in a way that leaves no single industry exposed.

Chris Smith, who oversees more than $500 million as the founding portfolio manager of the Artisan Thematic Fund, prefers to look at themes.

His methodology involves finding industries undergoing multiyear inflection points, then loading up on the shares of companies that best represent those trends. Smith then makes portfolio selections that offer earnings power on a two- to five-year basis.

Further, Smith doesn't own every company involved in a theme, just the very best, based on his models. That often means foregoing exposure in more popular, crowded names and instead opting for companies that aren't exactly in the mainstream.

Read more:We interviewed Wall Street's 8 top-performing investors to get their best ideas for 2019

Based on Smith's performance over the past year, it's safe to say his methods are working. The Artisan Thematic Fund returned 20.59% over the 12 months that ended in November, according to rankings compiled by Kiplinger. That puts it in the 99th percentile for the period, according to Bloomberg data.

Smith recently shared with Business Insider his top investment theme for 2019: datamonetization. In a way, his actions within the theme perfectly encapsulate how he achieves diversification.

He also shared a pair of single stock picks. All quotes below attributable to Weaver, and emphasis ours.

On the stocks he likes to support the theme:

"The easiest way for managers to capture the data monetization theme is through well-known companies like Google or Facebook. They get a lot of data on people, they monetize it, and they create revenue streams through advertising and search. We don’t try to look at those — we look at the next level down."

"CME Group (CME) and Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) are examples. ICE is a commodity and financial market exchange. They do a lot with energy, commodities, oil, and they own all the data behind the exchanges. Over half of their business now is selling data to other research firms that need all that information."

On how the theme helps his portfolio achieve diversification:

"With data monetization, we were able to buy companies in the financial sector — the exchanges — consumer discretionary stocks, technology stocks. We were able to express that theme across a lot of different sectors in our coverage universe."

"Because of that, those factors are actually not correlated with each other. They balance out the risk in the portfolio for that theme, which then allows it to get bigger. We work hard to spread our themes across different industries, so we can scale them. Otherwise, you just have too much of the same risk in your portfolio."

Click here to read our full story, featuring exclusive interviews with Wall Street's top 8 fund managers

SEE ALSO: We just got the most alarming sign yet that investors are bracing for a stock market crash

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NOW WATCH: The equity chief at $6.3 trillion BlackRock weighs in on the trade war, a possible recession, and offers her best investing advice for a tricky 2019 landscape

• The agency holding companies will survive, but there will be more consolidation, according to Sir Martin Sorrell.
• The former head of WPP said its recent mergers spell the "death" of the Y&R and J. Walter Thompson brands and that the Y&R name should have come first in the merged company.
• He said that with his new company, S4, he's not concerned with competitors but whether he can meet clients' data-related needs. 

Since Sir Martin Sorrell's sudden departure as chief of WPP earlier this year, he set up S4 Capital to create a global advertising, marketing and ad tech company by acquisition. That was followed by two big deals — MightyHive and MediaMonks.

Business Insider caught up with Sorrell offstage at its IGNITION Conference in New York in December, where he weighed in on the agency holding company model, WPP, and advertising measurement. Our interview has been edited and condensed.

Tanya Dua: With MediaMonks and MightyHive, S4 seems to have the programmatic and digital production side of the equation figured out. What's next?

Sir Martin Sorrell: We almost have the complete train set, probably about, three-quarters to seven-eighths of the set. I'd like to see a little bit more in content and a little bit more in first-party data. But it's difficult to find good assets, and they're expensive. On the data side, there's stuff that I really like, but pricing is hard. When IPG bought Acxiom, they seemed to leave behind the best asset [LiveRamp], and I wonder why that was.

Dua: The agency holding companies are making huge changes as well. Will that model as we know it survive?

Sorrell: They'll survive, but there will be more consolidation. I can't remember a time when it's been more revolutionary.

Dua: What is your opinion on the VMLY&R and Wunderman-J. Walter Thompson mergers at WPP?

Sorrell: VMLY&R was something that I initiated. [VMLY&R CEO] Jon Cook and I fully agreed that it was going to happen. We were going to put Geometry into it as well. But I think it was a mistake for Jon not to have been more magnanimous. He would have done himself and his people at VML a lot of good by calling it Y&RVML.

I can understand the idea of making it digital-first by implication, so you put Wunderman before Thompson and VML before Y&R, but it means the death of the Y&R and Thompson brand. I was in Argentina when it was announced, and Y&R and JWT in Argentina mean something.

These decisions are difficult to make, but when you make them, you have to blend them in. You have to go out and talk to the troops and explain why you're doing it, because if you don't, you will lose their hearts and minds.

Read more: Sir Martin Sorrell says the advertising industry reminds him of Burning Man, and should embrace ‘radical change’

Dua: Do these moves signal the death of creative agencies? You don't seem to be shopping for creative assets for S4.

Sorrell: You're living in the 19th century if you define creativity like Don Draper. The definition of creativity is shifting. Believe it or not, data analysts can be creative. People who do digital can be creative. Data doesn't destroy creativity, but enhances it, informs it and makes it more effective.

Dua: So who is S4 competing with? The consulting firms?

Sorrell: I don't worry too much about the industry. What I worry about is what does S4 deliver in terms of data, driving content and driving media planning, buying or programmatic. Several clients have said to me that is their model. They have their first-party data at the core, and that drives what they do from a content point of view and what they do on the media planning and buying side. 

The acid test of S4 will be whether the combination works effectively and has correctly analyzed what clients want. The mantra — it's a terrible mantra in many respects — is doing it faster, better, cheaper, and more efficiently.

Dua: You've said before that measurement needs to be improved. Some advertising executives have gone over to the measurement side recently. What are your thoughts on that?

Sorrell: Comscore is a tragedy. We invested in Comscore when I was at WPP, and they had a massive opportunity. I was really disappointed with the way that was handled. I'm just as hopeful now as I was before. With Nielsen, I think [new CEO] David Kenny will make a difference. It's too early to tell. But there's a big opportunity there. 

Dua: Has Amazon started to challenge Google and Facebook's dominance?

Sorrell: In terms of market cap, it has already. In terms of advertising, Amazon has a long way to [go], but it will challenge on advertising and search. 55% of product searches in the US, according to Kantar, are delivered or initiated through Amazon. Those are the three, the troika, if you ignore the Eastern challenge, which includes Tencent and Alibaba.

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• A number of high-profile advertising and marketing-tech deals happened this year, including AT&T's $1.6 billion acquisition of AppNexus and Adobe's $4.75 billion acquisition of Marketo.
• Sources say while there's still opportunity for consolidation, 2019 will be quieter than 2018.
• One reason is that hundreds of ad-tech companies have the same pitch for marketers.
• Meanwhile, independent companies like The Trade Desk and MediaMath are well-positioned because they create custom tech stacks for agencies and brands.

From AT&T's blockbuster deal to acquire Time Warner and AppNexus to Adobe's $4.75 billion bet on Marketo,  2018 was a big year for advertising and marketing-tech deals.

For years, venture capital firms and acquirers have chased "mad-tech" companies with the goal of loosening Facebook and Google's chokehold on digital advertising. Meanwhile, Amazon has emerged as a new threat to both the duopoly and smaller ad-tech companies.

This year produced some big deals. For example:

• AT&T purchased AppNexus for a reported $1.6 billion
• Private-equity firm Vista Equity Partners acquired a majority stake in Integral Ad Science, rumored to be worth $850 million
• Adobe shelled out $4.75 billion for Marketo, which automates and runs digital campaigns with data.

Facebook, Google and Amazon loomed over such deals. According to eMarketer, Facebook and Google controlled 56.8% of US digital ad dollars this year while Amazon will take 2.7%. Google has its tentacles deep into ad tech, powering and managing the data from ads served on millions of websites.

Read more:'The industry is looking for alternatives to the duopoly': Here are the winners and losers of AT&T's acquisition of AppNexus

Ad-tech firms need to prove that they can make money

Increasing pressure from the tech giants means that there could be less M&A activity in 2019, Jay MacDonald, CEO of the investment bank Digital Capital Advisors, told Business Insider. 

Meanwhile, investors are concerned with ad-tech companies' profitability.

"Companies out of necessity and survival are going to need to get profitable. They've known that, but now they're really starting to work on it," he said. "The ad markets tend to be fickle — they like the shiny, new object. If you're not profitable, you're no longer the new, shiny object."

There's a glut of companies who do the same thing

MacDonald said a growing number of ad-tech and mar-tech firms are vying to solve the same problem, making it hard for ad-tech firms to build bigger businesses. Take mobile marketing. A group of location-based companies like Verve, GroundTruth and PlaceIQ have long pitched their data to marketers as a way to better target ads, but these companies struggle to build big-enough audiences to attract advertisers.

Competition is stiff in programmatic advertising, too, where a growing number of vendors are vying for the same commoditized display ad impression. Companies like MediaMath and The Trade Desk have started to pitch technology like artificial intelligence and roots in connected TV advertising to set themselves apart.

Both OpenX and MediaMath went through leadership restructuring and layoffs this year.

"There's too many lookalike companies that are not the dominant player in their vertical," MacDonald said.

The growth in lookalike companies has led ad-tech firms to be more transparent in how they package ad deals, said Nate Woodman, U.S. chief data officer at Havas Media. As more marketers scrutinize so-called ad-tech taxes, companies like MediaMath are starting to break down the costs involved in media for buyers, then bundle the ad deals with data costs.

"The last couple of years have shed a lot of light on the ad-tech tax, and I'm putting out next year as something dramatically being done about it," he said. "The conversations with the data and media owners are turning more into bundling across technology, hardware, data and media and finding a combined price for all of that."

Marketers are looking for less "off the shelf" tech

One advantage that independent ad-tech and mar-tech firms have over giants like Google and Adobe is the ability to customize tech stacks for brands.

Instead of pitching marketers on the same generic set of tools, ad-tech companies can build tech pipes that are specific to them, which can be a big selling point with brands.

That's why Mac Delaney, SVP of media investment and innovation at Merkle, believes that marketers will lean harder on smaller ad-tech firms in 2019.

"Marketers will centralize on one platform for a much longer period of time, maybe forever, and that may not be [Google's] DoubleClick Bid Manager all the time," he said.

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: The legendary economist who predicted the housing crisis says the US will win the trade war

This is a preview of a research report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider's premium research service. To learn more about Business Insider Intelligence, click here.

Over the past five years, the world has seen a seemingly unending series of high-profile data breaches, defined as incidents in which unauthorized parties access and retrieve sensitive, secure, or private data.

Major incidents, like the 2013 Yahoo breach, which impacted all 3 million of the tech giant’s customers, and the more recent Equifax breach, which exposed the information of at least 143 million US adults, has kept this risk, and these threats, at the forefront for both businesses and consumers. And businesses have good reason to be concerned — of organizations breached, 22% lost customers, 29% lost revenue, and 23% lost business opportunities.

This threat isn’t going anywhere. Each of the past five years has seen, on average, 1,704 security incidents, impacting nearly 2 billion records. And hackers could be getting more efficient, using new technological tools to extract more data in fewer breach attempts. That’s making the security threat an industry-agnostic for any business holding sensitive data — at this point, virtually all companies — and therefore a necessity for firms to address proactively and prepare to react to.

The majority of breaches come from the outside, when a malicious actor is usually seeking access to records for financial gain, and tend to leverage malware or other software and hardware-related tools to access records. But they can come internally, as well as from accidents perpetrated by employees, like lost or stolen records or devices.

That means that firms need to have a broad-ranging plan in place, focusing on preventing breaches, detecting them quickly, and resolving and responding to them in the best possible way. That involves understanding protectable assets, ensuring compliance, and training employees, but also protecting data, investing in software to understand what normal and abnormal performance looks like, training employees, and building a response plan to mitigate as much damage as possible when the inevitable does occur.

Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider’s premium research service, has put together a detailed report on the data breach threat, who and what companies need to protect themselves from, and how they can most effectively do so from a technological and organizational perspective.

Here are some key takeaways from the report:

• The breach threat isn’t going anywhere. The number of overall breaches isn’t consistent — it soared from 2013 to 2016, but ticked down slightly last year — but hackers might be becoming better at obtaining more records with less work, which magnifies risk.
• The majority of breaches come from the outside, and leverage software and hardware attacks, like malware, web app attacks, point-of-service (POS) intrusion, and card skimmers.
• Firms need to build a strong front door to prevent as many breaches as possible, but they also need to develop institutional knowledge to detect a breach quickly, and plan for how to resolve and respond to it in order to limit damage — both financial and subjective — as effectively as possible.

In full, the report:

• Explains the scope of the breach threat, by industry and year, and identifies the top attacks.
• Identifies leading perpetrators and causes of breaches.
• Addresses strategies to cope with the threat in three key areas: prevention, detection, and resolution and response.
• Issues recommendations from both a technological and organizational perspective in each of these categories so that companies can avoid the fallout that a data breach can bring.

Subscribe to an All-Access pass to Business Insider Intelligence and gain immediate access to:

	This report and more than 250 other expertly researched reports
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• Elon Musk has filed a motion to dismiss the defamation allegation brought by British cave diver Vern Unsworth.
• Unsworth is suing Musk after the Tesla CEO baselessly called him a pedophile.
• Musk's lawyers argue that his "over-the-top insults" were opinion, not factual statements, and should be protected by free speech laws.

Elon Musk would really like everyone to just forget about that whole 'pedo' thing.

Lawyers for the Tesla CEO have filed a motion to dismiss the defamation claim brought by Vern Unsworth, the British cave diver baselessly described by Musk as a "pedo guy."

We first heard of the legal update on Thursday via BuzzFeed reporter Ryan Mac.

The billionaire CEO's attempt to dismiss the claim hinges on the arguments that Unsworth attacked Musk first, that Musk made his attacks on a social media platform known for "hyperbole", and that Musk's remarks were opinion and not statements of fact.

Musk's lawyers wrote in a filing to a California court: "[The] reasonable reader would not have believed that Musk — without ever having met Unsworth, in the midst of a schoolyard spat on social media, and from 8,000 miles afar — was conveying that he was in possession of private knowledge that Unsworth was sexually attracted to children or engaged with sex acts with children."

They described Twitter, where Musk first made his insults, as a "rough-and-tumble" platform known for "invective and hyperbole." Most readers, they claimed, don't necessarily expect everything they read on social media to be factually correct.

And they claimed Musk's statements were "imaginative attacks" which were protected by US free speech laws. Expressions of opinion are protected under Californian law.

The lawyers wrote: "The more colourful the invective, the more likely the reader is to understand that it is opinion."

Business Insider has contacted Unsworth's legal representatives in the US and the UK for comment.

Musk's feud with the British cave diver began in July

Vern Unsworth is one of the cave divers who helped in the effort this summer to rescue 12 Thai boys and their football coach from a network of caves in Thailand, where they had been stranded thanks to floodwater.

About a week after the boys went missing, Musk stated on Twitter that he was keen to help in the rescue attempt. He subsequently flew to Thailand with engineers from his company SpaceX to offer up a mini-submarine as a rescue vehicle. Ultimately, the head of the rescue mission described the mini-submarine as "not practical", and the boys were successfully rescued by diverse guiding them through the cave network.

After the rescue, Unsworth appeared on CNN and dismissed Elon Musk's mini-submarine, stating that the Tesla CEO could "stick his submarine where it hurts." He criticised the plan as a PR stunt.

This prompted Musk to describe Unsworth a "pedo guy" baselessly on Twitter. He later apologised and deleted the original tweet, but then revived the feud in August by asking why Unsworth hadn't sued him yet. He then doubled down on his original pedophile comments in an email to BuzzFeed, suggesting Unsworth was a "child rapist", again without offering proof.

Unsworth then sued for libel.

You can read Musk's motion to dismiss here:

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NOW WATCH: USB-C was supposed to be a universal connector — but it still has a lot of problems

• Cannabis stocks were among the most popular with millennials in 2018, according to data from Robinhood, a no-fee app popular among younger traders.
• Three cannabis stocks, Cronos, Canopy Growth, and Aurora Cannabis, were the most popular among Robinhood users this year.
• Tech giants such as Facebook and Apple remained popular despite company earnings indicating slower growth ahead.

Millennial investors were fascinated with weed and tech stocks in 2018, according to data gathered by Markets Insider from the no-free trading app Robinhood.

For the 4 million Robinhood traders, a large portion of which are millennials (22 to 37 years old), marijuana companies become their darlings this year. Three pot stocks, Cronos (+141,688, up 609%), Canopy Growth (+128,699, up 374%), and Aurora Cannabis (+88,889, up 1,057%) saw the biggest increases of ownership on the app. Markets Insider tracked data from March 22 through December 20.

Younger traders' enthusiasm for the cannabis companies came as the industry grew at a fast and furious pace. In the second half of the year, a number of beverage and tobacco companies, such as Constellation Brand and Altria, announced investments in cannabis producers, causing a "green rush" into the industry. Also fueling interest in the space were Canada and Michigan legalizing recreational use of the drug.

Additionally, tech giants such as Facebook and Apple— continued to attract attention despite company earnings indicating slower growth ahead.

In July, Facebook's earnings disaster and subsequent stock landslide was interpreted as a good buying opportunity among millennials and attracted a total of 61,307 Robinhood investors (+53.19%) to add the stock in the week following the results.

In November, when Apple fell out of favor with Wall Street and tumbled into a bear market amid waning iPhone demand, millennials were buying the weakness, allowing Apple reclaim its crown as the most-popular stock on Robinhood, with more than 210,000 owners on the app.

Here were the nine stocks that millennial investors on Robinhood were buying the most in 2018, in ascending by the number of net additions:

Amazon

Ticker: AMZN

Number of Robinhood shareholders:121,963 (+52,056, up 74%)

Popularity ranking: 11

Year-to-date performance: +21%

Source: Robinhood 

Microsoft

Ticker:MSFT

Number of Robinhood shareholders:164,079 (+54,743, up 50%)

Popularity ranking: 6

Year-to-date performance: +14%

Source: Robinhood 

Ford Motor

Ticker:F

Number of Robinhood shareholders:193,716 (+67,101, up 53%)

Popularity ranking: 3

Year-to-date performance: -40%

Source: Robinhood 

We’re hiring a VP of Subscription Marketing to aggressively grow subscriptions and lead our marketing team from our New York office. Insider Inc.’s subscriptions team is passionate about producing research products that help industry leaders transform their organizations using emerging digital technologies, along with premium business news in finance, markets, enterprise, and tech.

Job overview

Insider Inc. is an organization of doers from the top on down. We’re looking for someone who is a fountain of good ideas, moves fast, and loves to experiment, build, and iterate. It’s a role for someone with at least 7 years of email marketing experience, who is deeply curious about what compels people to take action and who has the technical and data chops to test their theories, build a strategy, and drive results.

As a team leader you’ll be responsible for our developing our marketing strategy, driving subscriptions, optimization, and engagement through email campaigns, maintaining relationships with technology vendors, forming new partnerships, and managing our marketing team. The VP of Subscription Marketing will also collaborate with stakeholders responsible for email across Insider.

Responsibilities:

• Build the vision and growth strategy of digital subscription marketing at Insider. Meet aggressive free and paid subscription signup goals to support individual / consumer business, as well as qualification and lead generation for enterprise business. Iterate quickly, generate new ideas, and double-down on winners.
   

• Optimize and execute on email. Develop and execute email campaigns to meet engagement, lead generation, and conversion goals. Optimize email campaigns and engagement. Delight our readers and subscribers.
   

• Develop a friction-free marketing funnel. From emails to landing pages to sign-ups to product/content delivery, make it a frictionless experience for our readers. Dive into audience data to make campaigns even better and remove sources of friction from our conversion process to create hassle-free sign ups across channels.
   

• Lead and train a high-performing team of digitally-savvy marketers to support the strategic goals of the business.
   

• Stay up to date on the newest digital tools and tactics in digital marketing. Review, recommend, and manage tools, services, and vendors. Evaluate, hire, and develop relationships with existing and new platforms, partners and vendors.

Qualifications:

• 7+ years in marketing with an exceptional digital and email marketing background

• Top-notch organizational skills and attention to detail

• Goal-oriented, data-driven, and errs on the side of action

• Technical expertise in digital analytics tools (Google Analytics, Adobe Analytics, ComScore etc.)

• Ability to closely manage timelines on concurrent campaigns supporting diverse business goals

• Up-to-date on industry developments and competitors and active in the media community

• Excellent technical implementation skills in HTML, email CRM platforms, etc.

• Solid experience managing a team of dedicated marketing professionals

• Hands on experience with paid digital campaigns (PPC, display, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and managing budgets, overseeing vendors, platforms

If this sounds like a great job for you, please apply online and include a cover letter highlighting why you’d be a good fit for the role

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Hello! Here's everything you need to know on Friday.

1. President Trump signing MAGA hats for US troops in Iraq:It has caused some division in the division. And elsewhere.

2. In an unexpected bungle, Instagram removed vertical scrolling and replaced it with a clunky horizontal feed. An unsurprisingly few users found this brief mistake amusing.

3. Like a good Cold War novel, a key dossier on murky matters concerning Michael Cohen is starting to knit together. Investigators are reportedly closer to placing Cohen and Kremlin representatives at "clandestine meeting/s" in Prague to talk about "liaisons" between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 US election.

4. David Kelly the chief global strategist at JPMorgan's $1.7 trillion funds arm blames 2 types of investors for the season's mad market movements.The recent sharp sell-offs are down to passive and "momentum" investors — byers and sellers depending on algorithms and automatic trades, Kelley said.

5. It's possible that Sears has 24 hours to live.Reports suggest the century-old department-store chain has just 24 hours to secure a bid for the company, otherwise it will be liquidated.

6.Don't believe in flying taxis or delivery drones? Then it's time to meet these 40 companies — the pace-setters of the future field.

7. Most Americans would rather spend the $5 billion Trump is demanding for the US-Mexico border wall on 3 things: Those things are infrastructure, education, and healthcare.

8. The British Prime Minister Theresa May has three months to sort out Brexit.Here are the five ways it could play out.

9. Indonesia orders flights to stay away from 'Child of Krakatoa.' The volcano Anak Karakatau continues to ominously belch smoke and spew ash after unleashing a tsunami this week that killed more than 430 people.

10. The oldest US World War II veteran dies at 112.Richard Overton was in his 30s when he volunteered for the Army and was at Pearl Harbor just after the Japanese attack in 1941.

And finally ...

While you were sleeping, the night sky over New York suddenly turned an icy, eerie blue. Twitter users snapped and sent the unearthly blue glow connected to an electrical explosion over Astoria.

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NOW WATCH: NASA sent an $850 million hammer to Mars and it could uncover clues to an outstanding mystery in our solar system

We’re hiring a Research Associate to join our Digital Health team at Business Insider Intelligence.

At Business Insider Intelligence, we’re passionate about making market research that industry leaders use to make strategic decisions. To accomplish that goal, we hire great writers with an unrelenting curiosity to uncover the deeper truths in industry news and craft them into compelling narratives on what the future will look like and what companies can do to get there first.

The digital health associate will create content on the development of digital technologies — from wearable devices and mobile health apps to telehealth services, artificial intelligence, and even blockchain — that are transforming everyday access and delivery of healthcare for patients, doctors, insurers, and pharmacies alike.

This is a role for someone with 1-3 years of relevant work experience, who is passionate about digital transformation (particularly in the healthcare sphere) and business, and loves to write.  

About Business Insider Intelligence

Business Insider Intelligence is Business Insider’s real-time, premium research service focused on digital disruption. We publish market data, trend analysis, and proprietary survey data for executives in many industries.

Desired Skills & Experience

• Ability to quickly sort through masses of data and pull out what really matters to professionals and why

• Ability to write clearly and concisely about data-driven trends, consumer and business-to-business markets, and the larger tech industry

• Diligence and persistence in researching

• Ability to work in a team-oriented, fast-paced, and rapidly-changing environment

• Attention to detail

• Proficiency in MS Excel required

• Solid grounding in business analysis fundamentals

• Strong communication and writing skills

• An interest in data-driven visual storytelling

• Internships in market/consumer research, consulting, tech research, or relevant experience in a similar position is helpful but not required

If this is the right opportunity for you, please apply online and tell us why you're a good fit for the role.

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• After a shaky start, wearables like smartwatches and fitness trackers have gained traction in healthcare, with US consumer use jumping from 9% in 2014 to 33% in 2018.
• More than 80% of consumers are willing to wear tech that measures health data — and penetration should continue to climb.
• The maturation of the wearable market will put more wearables in the hands of consumers and US businesses.

The US healthcare industry as it exists today is not sustainable. An aging patient population and rising burden of chronic disease have caused healthcare costs to skyrocket and left providers struggling to keep up with demand for care. 

Meanwhile, digital technologies in nearly every consumer experience outside of healthcare have raised patients’ expectations for good service to be higher than ever.

One of the key mechanisms through which healthcare providers can finally evolve their outdated practices and exceed these expectations is wearable technology.

Presently, 33% of US consumers have adopted wearables, such as smartwatches and fitness trackers, to play a more active role in managing their health. In turn, insurers, providers, and employers are poised to become just as active leveraging these devices – and the data they capture – to abandon the traditional reimbursement model and improve patient outcomes with personalized, value-based care.

Adoption is going to keep climbing, as more than 80% of consumers are willing to wear tech that measures health data, according to Accenture — though they have reservations about who exactly should access it.

A new report from Business Insider Intelligence, Business Insider’s premium research service, follows the growing adoption of wearables and breadth of functions they offer to outline how healthcare organizations and stakeholders can overcome this challenge and add greater value with wearable technology.

For insurers, providers, and employers, wearables present three distinct opportunities:

• Insurers can use wearable data to enhance risk assessments and drive customer lifetime value. One study shows that wearables can incentivize healthier behavior associated with a 30% reduction in risk of cardiovascular events and death.
• Providers can use the remote patient monitoring capabilities of wearable technology to improve chronic disease management, lessen the burden of staff shortages, and navigate a changing reimbursement model. And since 90% of patients no longer feel obligated to stay with providers that don't deliver a satisfactory digital experience, wearables could help to attract and retain them.
• Employers can combine wearables with cash incentives to lower insurance costs and improve employee productivity. For example, The Greater Dayton Regional Transit Authority yielded $5 million in healthcare cost savings through a wearable-based employee wellness program.

Want to Learn More?

The Wearables in US Healthcare Report details the current and future market landscape of wearables in the US healthcare sector. It explores the key drivers behind wearable usage by insurers, healthcare providers, and employers, and the opportunities wearables afford to each of these stakeholders. 

By outlining a successful case study from each stakeholder, the report highlights best practices in implementing wearables to reduce healthcare claims, improve patient outcomes, and drive insurance cost savings, as well as how the evolution of the market will create new, untapped opportunities for businesses.

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• President Donald Trump's surprise trip to Iraq to visit US troops fell short among some political commentators, including one of the most highly decorated officers in the US Army.
• Former US Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who was awarded three Purple Heart medals, two Distinguished Service Crosses, and two Silver Stars, described Trump's visit as "embarrassing" and "entirely inappropriate."
• McCaffrey said what was supposed to be a morale-boosting visit between troops and the commander-in-chief, became a political affair instead.
• McCaffrey also quoted a line from the sitcom "Seinfeld" in response to Trump's false claim that US troops received their first pay raise "in more than 10 years" under his administration.

President Donald Trump's surprise trip to Iraq to visit US troops, his first combat-zone visit as president, fell short among some political commentators, including one of the most highly decorated officers in the US Army.

Former US Army four-star Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who was awarded three Purple Heart medals, two Distinguished Service Crosses, and two Silver Stars, described Trump's visit as "embarrassing" and "entirely inappropriate."

McCaffrey said "it's a good thing that the president went to Iraq and visited the troops," but suggested that what was supposed to be a morale-boosting visit between troops and the commander-in-chief, became a political affair instead.

During his trip, Trump signed pieces of campaign memorabilia for the troops, including hats emblazoned with the "Make America Great Again" campaign slogan. McCaffrey suggested the hats may have been distributed by Trump's campaign; however, the US Air Force and White House disputed that assertion on Thursday, calling the materials "personal items" that service members chose to bring on their own.

Read more: People have a lot to say about Trump signing MAGA hats for US troops in Iraq

But Trump's speech to the troops particularly struck a nerve with McCaffrey. Last week, Trump announced he would withdraw the roughly 2,000 US troops from Syria, citing the highly disputed claim that ISIS had been "defeated." Following the backlash from many national security experts, Trump suggested he was open to using Iraq as a staging point for another intervention in Syria, "if we wanted to do something."

Trump, who did not meet with Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi during the trip, was also criticized for allegedly snubbing the leader of Iraq.

"The whole notion of going into Iraq and not genuflecting ... the Iraqis is simply outrageous," McCaffey said. "And announcing we're going to use it as the site from which we'll conduct combat operations in other nations, I mean, it's just inciting Iraqi sovereignty concerns.

McCaffrey also took aim at one of Trump's falsehoods about the military: the claim that US troops received their first pay raise "in more than 10 years" under his administration.

"The troops all should have known it was complete nonsense," McCaffrey said, "but they were sort of excited the commander-in-chief was there and they were willing to blow by it." McCaffey said.

SEE ALSO: People have a lot to say about Trump signing MAGA hats for US troops in Iraq

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